Schools have to embrace the internet and invest in teachers "like never before" or they will become redundant in a generation, the headmaster of Eton College warned today.

Anthony Little said "league table obsessed, class-room focused schools" would be overrun by the new technological age unless Ministers, schools and parents adapted.

He said that in an era where children could study Maths at Harvard over the internet, a new generation of flexible teachers was needed where they combined a traditional commitment to childrens' development with modern practices such as online marking.

Writing in The Mail on Sunday, he said the pace of change and rapid spread of internet tablets such as the iPad meant "the ground is shifting underneath adult assumptions".

He said: "Teachers and parents are understandably worried by the threats and dangers of social networking and the internet.

"But we should not confuse the medium with the uses to which it can be put."

He claimed that rather than worrying about becoming "relics" schools had to embrace "the massive dynamic frightening and exhilirating technological revolution " in classroom practice.

He added: "Second, we must celebrate the primacy of love over systems. We need to place the development of the person - heart and spirit as much as mind and body - at the very centre of what we do, or our schools will die.

"And to make these things happen we must invest in teachers like never before. The teachers of the future will need to be flexible, innovative pioneers."

Mr Little said inventive new approaches in the classroom were already on the way, such as using gaming to motivate children in tasks they find tedious.

He said the world of online shopping offered other possibilities, such as using the same principle behind 'people who bought x also bought y' in teaching.

He said: "Why not the same principle as an education aid? 'People who struggled do x, found that y helped?' Using the distilled experience of millions of students gives far greater depth than one expert can achieve."